MEMORIAL DAY

A brief prelude to our TRADITIONS program for May 30 to let you know that here we will commemorate Memorial Day as, one hopes, it should be commemorated. Song and Story and not bargain sales and other such moments of total missing of points.

As you know Si Kahn will be joining us for a period that will prove to be memorable in commemorating the day and also so shall the music for most of the program. I do promise we will end with a family reunion and barbecue---that is what our heroes fought for---though, one has to admit it has been a long time since we defended anything---that's for a later commentary.

Now let me give away the ending of the program right here---we will forego the theme and just play TAPS---but here is the entire history from this brilliant fellow and is also the person who performs it for us in the most moving way----

THURSDAY---ANOTHER EDITION OF......

The weekly flip of the fedora to Jimmy Cannon

 

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT......

1)      Some performers can go on forever and some just don’t know how to leave gracefully with all fond memories of them intact.

2)      If people open their minds for entertainment not in the large venues they will have just as good (of better) of a time than in the large expensive venues.  Opening of minds can mean closing your wallet for overpriced tickets.

3)      Richard Clarke’s new book shows us the danger and the promise of the possibility of “Cyber War”---no bombs needed.  The world has become a video/game console and we are the players.

4)      I don’t know what guns, bullets, ships, and planes cost but it has to be more than “1”s and”0”s.

5)      It seems that NYC bus drivers are friendly and courteous and NYC Subway booth attendants are surly and clueless to the system. Could be the lack of daylight.  OK—there are a few exceptions in both categories.  Very few.

6)      Pensions are an important thing and people have worked many years for them but some police (NYC and Suburbs) have really gamed the system and we are all paying for it.  Overtime in the last year or so as a basis for some to get even more than their salaries---in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Their services are a necessity but the taxpayer generosity is not.

7)      One has to wonder why investors (landlords) buy rent controlled or rent stabilized apartments in NYC knowing full well that they cannot get the market rate---without a fight (and usually an ugly one).  The note just handed to me gave the answer---“greed” and “lack of honor”.

8)      It’s said that “...they don’t build them like they used to..”  but it seems that cars last a lot longer but you don’t really drive them anymore---the computer does.  And the computer sometimes tells on you at inspection time and also when it forgets to slow you down no matter what you do.

9)      I never watched “Lost”. “24”, but did watch “Law & Order” (which I will not miss---since it will always be there in re-runs) but of all those programs the only series that ever held an interest to me (and is in re-runs on Centric) was “Homicide—Life on The Streets”   Non-formulaic (as Law & Order is ), with a great cast, and created by the wonderful Baltimore aficionado, Barry Levinson.

10)                    Are “friends” on Facebook not really “acquaintances”---if that ? 

 

     11)    When Si Kahn joins me this Sunday on TRADITIONS I guarantee meaningful music and memorable moments.

                 

ENTERTAINMENT NOTES AND THOUGHTS---AND A FEW SUGGESTIONS

A few suggestions for TRADITIONS and SUNDAY SIMCHA  will be posted later this week.  Interesting themes and guests to talk about.

 Now for the thoughts regarding entertainment and I surely hope I am not preaching to the choir here.  If I am just post "Amen" and  I will know it was the choir.

An interesting weekend of entertainment--or something that purports to be entertainment-- that drove a few thought home.  Friday evening was a delightful evening with some great performers--Buskin and Batteau (ably abetted by Marshal Rosenberg on percussion).  The venue a nice hall in Garden City, NY fully filled (approx. 150) with a wonderfully enthusiastic and receptive audience. The lads delivered, as always, a performance that goes down as great musical mastership along with great and pointed humor. 

We'll skip a video here and move on to the next evening at The Theater at Westbury aka The Westbury Music Tent (or something like that but now a Live Nation venue---heaven help us).   A relative generously purchased tickets for a performance that evening featuring Don Rickles and Joan Rivers.  Admittedly I did not expect her wholly inappropriate (  a polite term) appearance.

Starting with the performance it has to be said that Joan Rivers should stay home and practice speaking without an obscenity as every other word and also try to make some humorous points that are not is the worst taste one can imagine---from deaths in Haiti, the suicide of her husband, and descriptions of her gynecological problems among others.  Enough said about her since the alleged headliner was Mr. Warmth---Don Rickles.

It is a sad thing when a good performer---I won't say great since that is reserved for others--is too lame (in all aspects of that word) to appear on a stage.   A sad sight to watch him flounder about the stage and have one pray he does not fall.  Routines that are old hat that then evolve into tributes to people like Sinatra, Martin, and then morph into a tribute to troops in Iraq with a singing of Yankee Doodle Dandy ala James Cagney.  Sad!!

Sadder is that the audience asked for an encore and he then stayed on and on and on.  Seems like either he did not want the evening on stage to end or, my thought, he was waiting for handlers to help him off stage---there are no wings at this venue--you have to go up an aisle.

Best Don Rickles stick to the voice-overs he does for Toy Story  and leave the live stage looking like a winner and not a replica of the character Olivier portrayed in The Entertainer.

As to the venue.  That is one disaster waiting for a tragedy to happen.   One narrow road leading in and inept parking attendants creating a total traffic mess.  Leaving can take hours and no access for emergency vehicles at that time.

Which, if you stuck with me this long, brings me to the final point.   Individualism or Herd Mentality.  Terrific talents in a small venue at reasonable prices or highly hyped entertainment with either fading "legends" (in their own minds) and highly hyped current performers for astronomical ticket prices.  You have to make that choice and you may well be surprised at the real enjoyment you will get at the former rather than the latter.

Well, maybe a video is called for after all----Buskin and Batteau---you really do not want to suffer the other option.

THURSDAY--Another Edition of ...............

The weekly flip of the fedora to Jimmy Cannon.

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT......

1)      It’s always a delightful surprise to find that there really are just 6, or something like that, degrees of separation.   I still don’t know Kevin Bacon; but so many others you find to whom you do have a connection. 

2)      How did the Kevin Bacon and 6 degrees of separation start anyway?

3)      Law and Order is finishing but strangely I only really liked the earliest episodes with Moriarty, Ohrbach, Noth, and the first D.A. After that it was formulaic unlike “Homicide –Life on The Streets” with a great cast and non formulaic.

4)      With Cable TV, Internet, Satellite radio, Terrestrial radio, DVR, Smart Phones, and more there really no focused and large audience group anymore.  Advertising creativity is relegated to what attention clicks on a mouse get you. Bottom line; that all this divides us and, artificial virtual communities aside, divides people.

5)      What a shame that Phil Ochs topical music is still relevant.  Or, as Pete Seeger once wrote in his classic “Where Have All The Flowers Gone”---“...when will we ever learn”.

6)      Note that I said “topical”.  Phil Ochs other music is timeless in its beautiful.

7)      If I can just throw out the sports section of the newspaper why can I not avoid the sportscasters on radio in their mandatory use of as many words they can find that equal win or lose---trumped, trounced, flogged, walked over, ad nauseum.

8)      Don’t you think that a Museum of Ad Nauseums would be an appropriate venue to enshrine all the awful clichés, puns, and such?  Who knows it might get SRO and if not it might be a Turkey.  Two more items to add to the exhibits.

9)      If Jeopardy is for the really bright people with trivia queries that require knowledge why are the mundane interviews so boring and the people likewise---including the host?

10)                    I still like newspapers and not having to read them on a screen.  You can be just so current---then again with all this immediacy you can get caught in a current and drown.

                        

TRADITIONS ---NOT THE RADIO PROGRAM

Sometimes things evolve and become "traditional".  What we call "Folk Music" no  longer has to  be just twanging on a front porch.  Play it often enough and recall it over the years and it becomes "folk".  History sometimes has to wait in the wings to be properly written and let the events become digested, so to speak, so they can be more fully appreciated.

The Museum of The City of NY always has some truly interesting exhibits ranging from Charles Adams' NY, NYC through various lens, Robert Moses, and the main one that will be running through October 3 of this year---America's Mayor---NOT Giuliani--rather John V. Lindsay.

                                                      photo:katrina thomas
         Surely you all recognize the gentleman standing to the right of John Lindsay--left in picture

I have said this in another venue---"he was and idealist and not a pragmatist as so many were and are".   Taking office at a time when strife was rampant and disasters ready to unfold for NYC he had some great accomplishments.  Because of his idealism NYC did not burn during the riots of the 1960s as other cities did, NY theater was open to more people through TKTS, the Transit Workers Union was finally not placated each  contract expiration period, and the list goes on---including some missteps .

Best to go to the exhibit and see it all for yourself---or---click here 


There you will see some great videos, take a virtual tour, and you may leave comments of your recollections of The Lindsay Years----I, for one, felt then as I do now that we need people like him in office and, sadly, he much maligned in his years there.   Things were not always in his control but he always took the honorable position as opposed to the "pragmatists" who played by their own rules.   They shall be nameless but recall  those years and the shameful cast of characters that were around at the time.

THURSDAY ---ANOTHER EDITION OF....

A flip of the fedora to Jimmy Cannon

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT......

1)         It seems that people worry about their privacy and then post things on the Internet (Facebook, etc;) with more information than one needs to know.  From medical to dental information and the ever popular bowel matters.

2)         Perhaps people want their privacy protected by the law so that they can annoy the world with their own information.

3)         Other than that the Mafia was not a nation state it seems that Afghanistan is not much different. At least OUR laws strangled

4)         Pete Seeger says it best in song—“...bring em’  home”.  Or better yet—a paraphrase from, who was it—“Jose Jimenez” (of Steve Allen fame)---“...no my job”?

5)         How many times during the day do we hear these statements----“At the end of the day...”,  “Having said that....”, “On the other hand...”.  How about this to end all these overused vamps for time in interviews:  “At the end of the day, I have to say that on the other hand there are five fingers if you are not an amputee of any of the digits”.

6)         I would love to see an interviewer respond with this comment after thanking a guest for appearing and the guest saying “..thanks for having me”----“C’mon I’m not your mother”

7)         Some of the films depicting relations between children and ageing parents are comedic, touching, sad, you name it.  The Mother of them all is the 1937 film ( I could be classy and say “flick”) “Here Comes Tomorrow”---now on DVD.

           Available at The Orangeburg Library (Orangeburg NY) at no charge.

8)         Friday May 21 seems like a great day to head for Garden City to the Our Times Coffeehouse---they have B&B there that night---OK its not Cointreau but what that stands for is a better spirit---Buskin and Batteau.

9)         On May 3 Pete Seeger turned 91 but he may well be age dyslexic since, after seeing him at Tarrytown recently, he seems more like 19.

10)   I am learning not to judge a book by its cover---well, people by first impressions---books are probably best judged by their covers.

11)   Does everyone always have the top doctor in his field for their medical issues? 

      Think of all the interminable tales you hear about a person’s doctor being the head of this or that or the top in the universe.  How do those others make a living?  No one ever says I have a doctor and he is not really well known or the top of anything anywhere.